1.5.7-Sarah1281
Brick!Club 1.5.7 Fauchelevent becomes a Gardener in Paris So not only did Madeleine make the hospital about five times better than it was before but he has his own personal worker’s hospital for his workers? Is this only when they get sick or injured on the job? How harrowing is bead-making anyway? It’s really great of Madeleine to give Fauchelevent all that money (I wonder what he does with it?) and get him a nice job. Apparently the Fauchelevent thing was a flash-back since it happened before Madeleine became mayor. Mayors get cool mayor scarves, I see, and Javert feels a profound sense of wrongness when Madeleine becomes his new boss. Javert started avoiding Madeleine and I would say that he hadn’t had much to do with him before but he was apparently stalking him. I guess Javert lays off or at least minimizes the stalking now if he’s avoiding him. I guess this means that he doesn’t actually deliver oral reports on the state of the town every day. Even the people who had never met Madeleine loved him, I see, because he saved the government money collecting taxes. Fantine showed up after Madeleine became mayor, I see. It was a waste for her to go back home as her hope that someone would recognize her was all for naught. The fact no one recognized her means she totally could have presented herself as a widow with Cosette, too. She got a job, though, so all is good for the next five minutes. The narrator tells us that Fantine was bad at the job since it was so new to her but it seems like that is the sort of thing that one gets better at as they keep going. Commentary Aresnergal About the town, nope, the one in the book is Montreuil, nicknamed Montreuil-sur-Mer in the Pas-de-Calais departement, not Montreuil in Seine-Saint-Denis. That’s why that one has the “sur Mer” at the end, to avoid confusion, the one ine Seine-Saint-Denis is basically part of Paris’s suburbs, and it’s nicknames “Montreuil-sous-bois”. According to Wikipedia, there’s still 2 other towns named “Montreuil” in other departements, 3 others that don’t exist anymore, and a whole bunch of other towns with “Montreuil+other stuff” in the name. See, apparently the name is originating from the Old French word for Monastery, so I guess all those towns had a monastery. Anyway Montreuil-sur-Mer is way farther to Paris, hence the trouble when you only got horse carriages or feet to travel. Google Maps says that by car it takes something about 2 hours 30 minutes more or less. And yes, places names can be confusing when a lot of towns are named the same Sarah1281 (reply to Aresnergal) I see. France really has a problem with naming things! I’ve long-since thought that people just weren’t creative when naming things (how man New X’s do we have in the world?) but this is taking it to a new level! And now I’m wondering why Madeleine couldn’t have found Fauchelevent a nice job a little closer than Paris. Pilferingapples AUGH THAT IS A GOOD POINT ABOUT COSETTE. She could even have presented Cosette as her niece or something! Mothers died all the time! NOT THAT THAT WILL HAPPEN IN THIS BOOK, clearly everyone here is in a good and healthful situation and all will be just fantastic from here on forever. But OTHER mothers! So who would say Fantine wasn’t taking in a sister’s kid? Or a friend’s? FANTINE WHY CAN YOU NOT INVENT A STORY.